Who should be allowed to vote in a country? Should there be a land owning requirement? Wealth requirement? How about ancestry? should some peoples vote be worth more than others, and who? Should every citizen have the vote?
What things should be voted on by citizens, and what by politicians? How direct or indirect would you prefer your democracy?
This is a History & humanities thread, not a /pol/ thread, stay classy here.
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I think for high positions like presidency only one person from said family should be allowed. Basically so you don't have families like the Bush's running for president one after another. I'm not sure how far into relations it would go and if it would go.
>Should there be a land owning requirement? Wealth requirement? How about ancestry?
How do any of these things make someone more qualified to vote? The only thing that would make sense is education level, but even then not necessarily (many degrees have nothing to do with governance).
Plus, when you only give votes to educated people, there's an incentive to enact policies that hurt the nonvoting groups.
The only thing that makes sense is to give everyone the vote. If not, it would be better to just choose a non-democratic system IMO.
>Who should be allowed to vote in a country?
Every citizen legally considered responsible for his own action (not sure which is the proper term in english) should have a vote.
There isn't really any way to discriminate against bad voters, because no one can objectively decide who is right and who is wrong and so actually manage to find a way to select people fit to vote.
So your only option is to let everyone vote, and hope for the pool to be wide enough to cancel out biases.
You should have to take a test to prove you are literate and know how the government works before you can vote.
Whatever prevents mob rule, I'm down for.
>Every citizen legally considered responsible for his own action
Everyone is a citizen then?
>Everyone is a citizen then?
Everyone who has citizenship is a citizen.
Republicanism with varying degrees of direct democracy is the best system, which means that everyone should be able to vote on everything, even laws.
The current form of representative democracy is a farce that is literally identical to a form of feudal aristocracy, in that whole families of political leaders stay in power for generations.
If political power was restricted to actual members of the society and not a political elite, a lot of things would change.
There should definitely be a much higher age requirement. Young people don't know shit about politics.
>Young people don't know shit about politics.
They do though, they're usually just too ideological and romantic.
Once you turn 65, there should be a choice between social security and voting rights, not both.
No vote.
State funded academies on governance with free entry and sortition into executive body of state.
No private property.
>No private property.
Why even.
Tbqh, that choice should exist regardless of age.
That's retarded. Said social security was bought by taxes. Why should one lose a right upon acquiring something he lawfully bought?
direct democracy is fucking stupid
mob rule is shit tier and the proletariat are fucking retards
Because now social security can be considered an even better investment as a bribe to keep fucking retarded poor people from fucking up your democracy
I don't agree. Switzerland is doing pretty well, and they are probably the most direct democratic country in the world.
It's anti-democratic.
So they can't vote for more and more bennies.
This is a particular problem for the elderly because they don't engage in productive labor, and spending money on them doesn't provide any sort of return.
Also
>he thinks anyone actually pays the same amount into Social Security as they receive
>implying not a pyramid scheme
they don't have niggers that want gibsmedats
No more than being good manipulators, or being widely respected. How are you gonna avoid that?
You can't make everyone's worth the exact same, because spoiler alert: we're all different.
>This is a History & humanities thread, not a /pol/ thread, stay classy here.
>So they can't vote for more and more bennies.
You might as well take voting rights away taxpayers so that they won't slash their taxes by the same logic.
>he thinks anyone actually pays the same amount into Social Security as they receive
If it were so, it would be the stupidest investment ever conceived. Ever heard of interest?
Fixed term sortition, of course.
en.wikipedia.org
>he seriously thinks Social Security is anything except for a wealth redistribution program from the young to the old
>he thinks Social Security can function with zero population growth
That's not democracy anymore, that's demarchy.
>he thinks bad administration invalidates the system's logic
Meaningless post. Don't pretend to know what you're talking about.
The problem with restricting the rights of a certain class of people (or all the people, or oppressing them in any other way) is that they will eventually rebel. It's a problem of when not if. So you may as well give equal voting rights to everyone.
People on the political fringes talk often of their "perfect order", but these orders are of a nature that they cannot survive over a long period of time, or at least not over a long period of time without rebellion.
If interest was enough to meet the demand, then people would handle it with private retirement funds.
The truth is that old people vote more often, because they don't have jobs.
So politicians figured out a way to confiscate money directly from working age people who vote less often, and give it to the elderly.
If the alternative really was starving, then they should accept it over the franchise any day of the week. Most of them wouldn't though.
That's how the Athenians envisioned democracy. They used sortition because they believed electing politicians was undemocratic.
Because rich and influential people always win elections, making them inherently aristocratic.
A democracy where every citizen has equal voting rights also cannot last because dumbass uneducated proletariats fuck everything up
doesn't make my point invalid just because it hurts your feelings
democracy is flawed and stupid
the only reason we even need democracy is b/c proles get fugging uppity that theyre fugging losers who dont know how to make money so we have to "give them a vote" to appease them
Cry more
goo goo ga ga gommnist bby sad the proles can seize the means of production ??? :(((( goo goo gaga
An epistocracy with an enfranchisement lottery seems to be the most effective system but we all know that the general public would never be willing to accept such a thing.
Soviets won the space race. :)
>Who should be allowed to vote in a country?
The warlord who owns it. What a stupid question.
>Allowing people to vote
T. Machiavelli
>Allowing people to vote
There is no way of deciding who does and doesn't decide to vote without it being totally arbitrary, having all citizens vote is better than some skewed minority. Everyone thinks the educated, or at least invested (not just economically, I mean), but how do you legislate that without barring people who, by all means, are competent and informed enough to take voting seriously? You can't, really.
The whole idea for voting for a politician in the first place is voting for someone you believe is more competent and smarter than you while maintaining a similar enough of a value so that you can actually trust them to vote for your, and everyone else's, best interests. By all means politicians are necessary and important. Direct democracy doesn't work well on national levels, or at least its Athenian pure-democracy derivative doesn't. Local citizen votes don't especially bother me, because locals tend to be better informed about local issues than larger institutions do.
I think the big issue in America, I can't speak really for other countries but I'm sure it's not too different, is that voters don't enjoy having their ideals questioned, and aren't invested enough to actually learn, to any basic extent, the history and workings of any particular issue, simply expecting their guy to do all of the work. To voter's credit, a lot of politicians and MSM hasn't done a good job of even attempting to inform people-- this, in my opinion, has led to the more recent uprising of anti-academic ":Alternative Media" (IE hearing your beliefs and views in a distorted echo chamber). It should not be of any surprise that places like /pol/ (and whatever its ultra-leftist equivalent is) have propped up and own influence.
Space race is irrelevant.
>Who should be allowed to vote in a country?
Ideally, nobody.
to be fair i don't think there's an abundance of pro-academic mainstream media, at least no "popular" form of that
CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Reuters etc etc are all pretty fucking anti-academic even if they'd like to pretend they weren't
I agree, and I'm pretty angry about that. Though, unlike Fox or ABC, I don't think CNN or Reuters have that ill of an intent, or at least their major pundits don't. Call me an optimist, I just think they've been misled, much like their audience.
>There is no way of deciding who does and doesn't decide to vote without it being totally arbitrary
No.
Guess we should fear the inevitable rebellion of the 10 year olds. People are fine with having their rights restricted in one way if they think they stand to gain something in exchange or if the loss from having the right restricted is minimal in their eyes compared to the risk of rebellion to gain the right.
You can be adjudicated mentally defective, it's usually reserved in the United States for people with severe dementia.
>White (over 80%)
>Nobody relying on Welfare/grants/subsidies
>High school education or more, in the case of women, Masters degree or more.
Just fixed it.
go home ivan
I think this is basically a balancing act between representation and efficiency.
it's undeniable that autocracies are a million times more efficient than democracies but the people have no voice, or very little.
But democracies are a million times more stable than autocracies. it gives the citizens (at least an illusion) of sovereignty and liberty, a genuine feeling that they can change something and mold their country.
Although I believe America is a falling empire, she is a shining example of a country that thrived through the idea of freedom and liberty, a """free unrelated market,""" and "democracy." I strongly believe that her success ties to all of those things. I don't think you'll see a large scale uprising in America for a pretty long time.
But then again, our government is highly inefficient and slow as fuck. But to address the amount of direct democracy, I think that in smaller communities it could be more direct but I don't think that federal laws should be direct.
And I think it would be cool to hold elected officials to their views when elected. Like they could get kicked out of office if they vote on a pro-choice law if they previously said they were pro-life. Like, if you bought something and it didn't do what it was advertised to do, you'd be pretty pissed right? Same concept.
>high school education
>Who should be allowed to vote in a country?
People with degree-level or higher qualifications in Economics, Sociology, or other closely related fields, subject to high levels of performance on yearly tests regarding contemporary political events (which, of course, are objective as possible).
Economic varibales which easily provoke hysterics among the public (immigration, social security) are taken out of political control, and placed under the remit of independent organisations.
We don't let the mob vote on how we run the Fed or the Bank of England.
Why?
Because they don't know the first fucking thing about economics. Those with mortgages would vote to lower interest rates, those with savings would vote to raise interest rates. The value of your currency would be halving by the hour.
Why, then, do we apply a different standard to other areas of politics which are, really, no more subjective?
>Like they could get kicked out of office if they vote on a pro-choice law if they previously said they were pro-life.
Why would you want only ideologues in government?
If the facts change, I want somebody who's pragmatic enough to change their mind.
Having said that, I agree to some extent. Promises made during election races should be legally binding, unless an extraordinary situation arises (war or severe economic downturn). That'd stop people making unrealistic promises just to get into power.
>Why would you want only ideologues in government?
Good point. But I do want my representative to represent what I voted him in for. If his mind changes that's fine, but he has a duty to abide by what the citizens elected him to vote for.
>If the facts change, I want somebody who's pragmatic enough to change their mind.
I agree, but I think this could be fixed with stricter and shorter term limits. Like every 3 to 4 years they could be reelected and at that point they could change their mind on a subject.
Also if they don't address something during the campaign they can do whatever they want really.
what is is m8? enlighten me
>People with degree-level or higher qualifications in Economics, Sociology, or other closely related fields, subject to high levels of performance on yearly tests regarding contemporary political events (which, of course, are objective as possible).
The problem is that there are plenty of smart and well informed people without degrees, who won't be able to pass the test. How you'd go about formulating such a test is also questionable-- how much time and money is going to go into these these yearly updated tests, and how much time, effort, and money will have to go into individually reviewing and grading them? A lot; too much.
Furthermore, you've now barred people from entering whose lack of education might not even be their fault-- couldn't afford college, was born into an area with shit schools.
The easiest way to get good voters? Have good and free education and a culture system that values it. Ideally, people should be in some form of formal education all their lives, IMO
>Good point. But I do want my representative to represent what I voted him in for. If his mind changes that's fine, but he has a duty to abide by what the citizens elected him to vote for.
While I sympathize with this feeling, representatives represent a lot of people, not just you. They don't even just represent the people who voted for them, they represent everyone in their voting district. They have to make compromises and "reach across the aisle", so to speak.
Plus, how do you determine when someone has broken their promise? To use your pro-choice/ pro-life example, is the representative who said "I support a woman's right to choose" subject to recall for voting in favor of *any* restriction on abortion? Conversely, I can see how someone could generally be pro-life, but would see no problem with allowing the morning-after pill. Should this person who campaigned on a pro-life position be terminated from office? This would invite tons of abusive litigation.
Yeah you're right.
I think they should have stuck to landowners only. Millions of people living in government housing voting for more benefits is killing the country.
Democracy exists so that the masses can keep the upper class and government in check. Its the vehicle of which wealth is redistributed to the masses. The reminder that the hoi polloi are in charge, not the property owners.
The only reason rich people are allowed to exist is to prop up the rest of society, and to give an incentive to individuals to work harder and invest.
I don't think CNN is very unified. I think there's fucking retards like Don Lemon who are subversive as fuck and do have ill intent then there's people like Fareed Zakaria who's probably got good intent he's just a fugging retarded gommie :)))) then there's Anderson Cooper who actually cares about honest, academic journalism.